


Legacy

by ciscoscaitlin, MoonlightShines (Thatkillervibe)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Time Travel, season 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 21:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18535729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciscoscaitlin/pseuds/ciscoscaitlin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkillervibe/pseuds/MoonlightShines
Summary: This was what Cisco had always wanted. He felt tears sting in his eyes and he hugged his arms around himself.This changed everything. She meant everything.





	Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> *Ciscoscaitlin and I talk literally every day but it took almost half a year to post one chapter. Oops.

The steady beep of the computer’s monitor tracking the process of the gene analysis was one of the only things keeping him going.

 

And then all his papers flew off his desk with a gust of wind.

 

“Barry!” Cisco shouted with frustration, trying to hold them all down.

 

“Daddy!”

 

Cisco’s eyebrows flew up at that. He turned around and his jaw went slack.

 

Cisco threw off his lab goggles, speechless.

 

The little girl in front of him was adorable. And clearly very lost. Bouncy curly brown hair and really big eyes, lips shaped like a heart and wearing a little white dress with striped leggings. Her head was tilted to the side and she was clutching a large plush pink rabbit in her small hands as if her life depended on it. She couldn’t be older than four years old.

 

The little girl jumped up and down excitedly when he met her eyes and she clambered to his seat, pulling on his pant leg.

 

What the fuck.

 

“....Okay….” Cisco laughed nervously, folding his hands together and taking a careful step forward.  “Hi. Hi there. Just a few questions. _Who_ _are you?_  What are you doing and _how_ did you get here?”

 

“Daddy, it’s me! Baby Ellie!”

 

Cisco blinked. The first thing coming to mind is that famous vine of that baby running up to that girl thinking she was his father. The girl goes all _DO I LOOK LIKE—_

 

Cisco glanced back down and stopped his train of thought, feeling his brain short circuit.

 

She was latina. And familiar looking. Eerily familiar. Familiar like his family’s dusty photo albums in the attic back home.

 

“....What’s your name?” he said again, slowly.

 

“Baby Ellie.”

 

Cisco was patient. “Your last name, honey.”

 

“Ellie Ramon!”

 

Cisco spluttered. “—I’m your—You’re my—“

 

“Daddy!”

 

He immediately believed her.

 

 _“Oh my god_.”

 

“Up, up, up!”

 

She was insistent, tugging his pants wildly with a pout. Cisco instantly picked her up, sitting her on his lap.

 

He studied her as she beamed at him with childish glee.

 

Yeah, she looked like him. But. Her eyes. Those weren’t his. Those were—He shook his head. Maybe he was projecting.

 

His eyes wandered down her outfit. Seriously what the hell were on her feet? The shoes, the socks. Were those cubes? 3D velcro? He snorted. Fashion trends were so bizarre if you weren’t there when they happen.

 

“Hi,” he said again, softer. “Hi, you’re mine, aren’t you?”

 

Ellie threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. He rested his chin over her head as she laid her cheek against his shoulder, and Cisco’s heart constricted in his chest when she giggled at his lovesick face after she gave him a smacking kiss.

 

He leaned back in his chair, watching her dance her plush happily.

 

“Whatcha got there?” he asked her.

 

“Bear bear!”

 

Cisco frowned, staring at the pink rabbit.

 

“Honey, that’s a rabbit.”

 

Ellie yanked the stuffed animal to her chest, glaring defiantly with a cute baby growl. “It’s a _bear bear._ ”

 

Cisco chuckled, putting his hands up, “Okay! Alright I'm sorry! It’s clearly a…” he made a disgruntled face. “...A bear.”

 

“Bear _Bear,”_ she corrected.

 

“Yes, of course.”

 

He toyed with his next question. “So, uh, who’s your mom?”

 

“Mommy.”

 

“Yeah, but who _is_ she?”

 

She wiggled off his lap, and opened a baby breach, one so stupendously tiny he put his hand to his heart. He was going to explode from cuteness overload.

 

Okay. There was no doubt about it. That was his baby.

 

He tried to catch the little girl but she was nimble, slipping through his fingers and disappearing into thin air.

 

Cisco straightened back up, looking around his workshop.

 

It was like it didn’t happen.

 

Maybe it didn’t.

 

Had he imagined it? Was she just a hallucination, or another figment of his imagination he’d made up from his subconscious…. a cheap trick of his innermost desires? Or was another meta getting into his head, like Alchemy and Savitar had with Dante?

 

…. _No_.

 

Something flipped inside his chest, his heart pounding and a strange pleasant feeling dwelling in the pit of his stomach.

 

It was real. Baby Ellie. How the word _“Daddy!”_ came so naturally out of her mouth. How she smiled at him as though he were her entire world. How he felt inclined to hold her in his arms.

 

He knew it was real. But he wasn’t going to go strolling into the Cortex announcing he just met his future daughter because they’d all think he’d hit his head, even if it had happened to Team Flash before.

 

But that was Nora. Nora was a speedster with a logical means to time travel. Nora was Barry and Iris’s child. _Their_ child. It was believable because they were together and married and Nora had Iris’s nose and Barry’s stubbornness, old enough to explain who she was and how she got there.

 

Ellie was a _baby._

 

 _His_ baby.

 

His baby girl that he would get to hold tightly in his arms on the day of her birth, her little chubby fingers curling over his thumb in a tight baby grasp. He’d get to feed her and nurture her. He’d hear her first words and watch as she took her first steps. He’d get to read her bedtime stories and hold her when she’s scared or crying. He’d teach her Spanish and sneak her cookies. Brush her hair, and help her manage those unruly curls. God knows she got them from him.

 

A noise slipped out of his mouth, a little laugh, still in awed disbelief.

 

She was the little life he had always wanted.

 

He felt tears sting in his eyes and he hugged his arms around himself.

 

This changed everything.

 

Ellie meant _everything._

 

Cisco was startled out of his daydream when he heard a loud shriek from across the building, somewhere past the Cortex. Goosebumps prickled at his skin, because he knew who that scream belonged to.

 

Cisco sprinted out of his workshop, skidding in his sneakers, passing a befuddled Barry and Ralph as he ran to the Med Bay.

 

“Caitlin!”

 

Caitlin stumbled out of her lab, rattled, pointing a shaky finger behind her. “There was a _child!”_

 

Cisco’s eyes widened. Was Ellie still here?

 

Barry sped to the Med Bay and found it empty. “Where??”

 

“Right there!” Caitlin cried, pointing at the bed. “I swear there was a child!”

 

Cisco took her shoulder, meeting her panicked eyes. “A girl? About ye tall?” He dropped his hand to just slightly above his knees.

 

Iris, who was sitting at the desks with Sherloque tilted her head. “Um…”

 

Before Caitlin could answer, another baby breach opened up in the middle of the Cortex.

 

Ellie skipped through, her tiny skirt twirling up and her adorable high pitched giggles bouncing off the walls.

 

Everyone except Cisco screamed, startling Ellie terribly and she burst into tears. Her tiny arms cuddling her pink rabbit to her chest, her cheeks nuzzled into the bunnies floppy ears.

 

“Who the hell is _that?_ ” Ralph yelped, and Cisco’s baby only cried harder.

 

Iris gasped, leaping out of her chair. “A _baby!”_

 

Cisco’s arm let go of Caitlin’s and he jumped past Iris, scooping Ellie up in his arms and shielding her away from all the commotion.

 

“There, there,” Cisco soothed, bouncing her against his hip, her bunny flopping up and down, somewhat smacking his face. “Sweetheart, please don’t cry. They were just so startled to meet you! You’re okay!”

  
Ellie sniffled, quieting down as big fat tears streamed down her chubby cheeks.

 

Sherloque narrowed his eyes. “C’est quoi ça? Tu es son père!”

 

“....Cisco...What’s going on?”

 

He faltered, meeting his friends' bewildered eyes. His eyes locked on Caitlin’s who was silently stunned.

 

He laughed as Ellie tucked her face into the crook of his neck, tangling her little fingers into his hair. That seemed to quiet her down.

 

“Cisco?”

 

“Yeah, um.” There was no proper way to do this. “This is my daughter. Baby Ellie. And, uh, that’s her Bear Bear. She’s from the future.”

  
Cisco paused. “I think.”

 

He looked at Iris, whose face had softened. He knew she’d understand. “No, I _know._ ”

  
“ _Dude,_ ” Barry said.

 

“I know it sounds crazy but she’s my kid.”

 

“How did she get here?” Iris asked, walking forward to rub Ellie’s back, trying to coax her out again.

 

Cisco smiled, then looked at Caitlin.

 

She raised an eyebrow, but looked very uneasy.

 

“I’m not sure,” Cisco answered honestly. “I just--There was a woosh and suddenly she was there in my workshop.”

 

Sherloque’s eyebrows climbed sky high. “C’est impossible je sais, mais regard. C’est une petite Francisco.”

 

Cisco pointed at Sherloque. “I got that. Yeah, she looks like me! Look!” He bounced her again and asked for her name.

 

“Ellie Ramon,” she answered dutifully. As dutifully an adorable little girl could sound.

 

“And you saw the baby breach. You all saw that. How can you not believe it?”

 

Barry and Caitlin shared skeptical looks.

 

“Cisco...You don’t know for sure. How could a girl that young just time travel like that if she’s not a speedster?”

 

“Maybe she is one?” Iris pointed out. “Like Nora?”

 

Something like dread settled in the pit of Cisco’s stomach. “Ellie,” he asked. “Can you run super fast? Does your mommy do that?”

 

She shook her head.

 

“Maybe she’s Cynthia’s.”

 

“No.”

 

“You _sure?”_ Barry asked.

 

Cisco rolled his eyes. “Yes. She doesn’t like kids.”

 

“Well what about another Earth?”

 

He couldn’t help but watch Caitlin, observing her stiff posture, wide eyes and fidgety fingers. The way her lips were spread out in a thin line, confining her silence. He brushed the hair out of Ellie’s eyes.

 

“I—No. Listen. Didn’t you know it was real when you two met Nora? Iris, come on, I know you see this. It’s the same way. How you felt it in your bones. Looked into her eyes and saw yourself. Saw—” He cut himself off abruptly, surprised at what he was about to say.

 

He wasn’t imagining it. How in Ellie he saw _Caitlin._

 

Ellie began to squirm. Cisco put her down hesitantly and she made a beeline for her.

 

Cisco’s mouth parted.

 

Ellie looked up at Caitlin, blossoming a beautiful smile. “Hi Mommy. Up?”

 

There was a pregnant pause.

 

“I—” Caitlin’s voice is very faint. “I need to sit down.”

 

“Up!”

 

Cisco felt the tears prickle again in the corner of his eyes. “She’s _our_ baby?”

 

“Cisco—“ Barry tried to say but Iris shushed him.

 

Ralph, who had been silently flailing the entire time, stretched his long hand to grab a chair just as Caitlin’s knees started to buckle.

 

She sat down with a thud, staring down at Ellie. Her voice was shaky. “Sweetheart, I’m not sure if I’m your mother. I need to run a DNA test, and a—“

 

 _“Up!”_ Ellie screamed, throwing Bear Bear to the ground as she balled her hands into little fists. “Up! Mommy _please!_ Up!”

 

Cisco ran to grab her again but stopped when Ellie’s fingers splayed out with little snowflakes, her eyes going white.

 

Caitlin gasped and Cisco jumped back.

 

“ _Oh my god!”_ Cisco’s heart skyrocketed, and he tumbled over his words. “She’s got both of—The, the Vibe and the Frost and the—“  

 

He took Caitlin’s frozen hand. “Caitlin. Ellie is _ours._ ”

 

Caitlin looked terrified. Not the Killer Frost terrified, but the _I can’t control what is happening how do I proceed_ face she’d shoot him when she wanted him by her side in a do or die Team Flash situation.  

 

Caitlin’s fingers flexed, reaching for her daughter. For the little girl with Vibe and Frost. Spectacular and powerful and tiny. And beautiful, Cisco couldn’t help but add. Like her mother.

 

She placed Ellie in her lap, the same way Cisco had the first time he met her.

 

She didn’t speak, didn’t even act like Cisco was in the room for a good minute, just staring at her daughter. Their daughter, now. Now that he knew for sure.

 

Cisco crouched next to Caitlin’s chair, unable to take his eyes off them. Caitlin cupped Ellie’s face in her hand, brushing the soft skin of her baby cheek with the pad of her thumb.  

 

“She has my eyes,” Caitlin whispered, introspective.

 

Cisco watched them both, spreading a slow smile now that their faces were side by side, the way Caitlin and Ellie’s bright irises matched in both lovely brown and icy white. “I know.”

 

Iris gave Barry an _I told you so_ look. “I think that settles the maternity questions, don’t you think?”

 

Barry’s hand was over his mouth, unable to stop staring at Cisco and Caitlin’s baby. “I guess so.” Barry swallowed, then carded a hand through his hair, pacing. “Oh god, this is going to mess up another timeline.”

 

“I have a baby,” Caitlin breathed, finally breaking out of her trance. She turned to Cisco. “ _We_ have a baby?”

 

There was a question in her tone, but no incredulousness or mockery. He understood she still needed to process, that Caitlin needed time, but for him. It was fact. It was clear, she belonged to them. As clear as Barry was The Flash and grass was green.

 

Cisco could hardly believe his luck. “We do.”

 

“Wait so does this mean what I think it does?” Ralph interrupted, looking between the two of them with an inquisitive expression.

 

“Let’s leave Cisco and Caitlin alone for a while guys,” Iris announced loudly, single filing the men out of the Cortex.

 

The room emptied and all that was left in the Cortex was…Cisco’s _family_.

 

He picked up Bear Bear and gave it back to his little girl.

 

Baby Ellie started to doze off, snuggling against Caitlin. Caitlin’s hand automatically went to her back, holding her close.

 

Caitlin was gentle with her next words, “I still want to run some tests. Make sure she’s healthy, prove she’s from our dimension. Are you alright with that?”

 

Cisco nodded. “Yes, of course.”

 

Caitlin stood up finally, Ellie passed out against her shoulder. They walked into the Med Bay. She laid her down on the cot and began opening a tourniquet to take a blood sample.  

 

“I know I’d want to make sure my daughter is safe. And I know I’d be worried sick if I didn’t know where she was, so I’ll do my best to take care of her until we can get her back home safe where she belongs. Hopefully then we’ll get some more answers.”

 

She asked Cisco to pass over her blue gloves. He watched as the blood was drawn, Ellie only flinching slightly in her sleep. Caitlin then processed the sample into the system.

 

It’s only after the tests were running that Cisco splayed his hands across her desk and said, “You suspected. You suspected right away. That’s why you were so spooked. A little girl popped up into your lab out of the blue and you _knew_ she was yours.”

  
It made sense too, he realized. Earlier when he asked who her mother was and she went poof. Ellie sent her breach to the Med Bay, where Caitlin spent all of her hours. She knew Star Labs like the back of her hand. She didn't disappear. She was answering his question.  

 

Caitlin wouldn’t meet his eyes, staring at the monitor. “Cisco—” she began, but stopped short, the computer beeping jarringly. Caitlin startled a little too much and Cisco frowned with concern, at how much Caitlin was on edge.

 

She stared at the screen, almost white with shock.

 

“What?” Cisco pressed, wondering what could be so surprising about her blood sample.

 

Caitlin didn’t answer, eyes glued to the computer.

 

“What is it?” he said again.

 

He came over to her side, reading over her shoulder. The analysis was complete and in bold text it showed the compatibility with Earth 1 frequency, as well as 100% accurate maternal genetic relation and a 99.9% for himself.

 

There it was, in science and numbers.

 

Caitlin didn’t say a thing, and Cisco wasn’t even sure if she was breathing, her hands frozen over the keyboard.

 

He reached over and took a screenshot, then lightly placed his hand over hers. She didn’t acknowledge it, but she inhaled sharply through her nose. He removed his touch to give her some space, returning to Ellie’s sleeping form, sprawled out on the bed with a new little bandaid on the inside of her arm.

 

Cisco ran a finger delicately along the side of her face, careful not to wake her, drinking her in.

 

It was so obvious to him. The way her long baby eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks, and her mouth parted, taking shallow breaths in deep slumber. She was so inherently Caitlin, not just by appearance or powers but already in spirit, Caitlin spilling out of her in the personality revealed to them in their few minutes together that Cisco has already memorized and treasured in his heart.

 

“Why won’t you believe it?” he couldn’t help but blurt out, forceful despite his hushed tone.

 

Caitlin came back to herself, turning in her chair. Her fingers twitched at her sides repetitively tapping against the black stockings on her leg.

 

“Because it suggests a future where we’re together,” she said at last, sounding far away.

 

He ducked his head, tucking his hair behind his ear before returning her gaze, swallowing a lump down his throat. “Is that so crazy?”

 

Her fingers twitched again and her voice was so quiet, it was like a breath of air.

 

“No.”

 

She cleared her throat and placed her hands in her lap, giving him a strained smile, changing the subject.

“What are we going to do when she wakes up?”

 

 


End file.
